This regular feature is back again. The idea is that, over the weekend, you should post your thoughts in a more leisurely fashion than in ordinary comments or the Monday Message Board.
Please post your thoughts on any topic, at whatever length seems appropriate to you. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.
John Quiggin 
There are traitors in the Pentagon.
http://newsobserver.com/24hour/nation/story/2367190p-10613673c.html
“WASHINGTON (AP) – A four-year investigation into whether Israel improperly obtained U.S. secrets produced its first criminal charge with the arrest of a Pentagon analyst. Authorities are trying to determine whether any classified information reached Israel.
Larry Franklin was charged Wednesday with providing top-secret information about potential attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq to two executives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential pro-Israel lobbying group.”
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john- I have just read and enjoyed your article in the Fin ReVIEW.
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What’s with the ‘no coarse language’? So long as it’s within the framework of ‘civilised discussion’, I can’t see a problem with a bit of spice and vim. The Russian word ‘zhe’, which has no meaning other than ‘added emphasis to the following’, is much like the English adjective ‘f*cken’. It’s just another way of saying ‘very’ or ‘extremely’. Once we overcome the middle class objection to working class terminology, the word ‘f*ck’ is a fantastic addition to one’s lexicon – so versatile! I think there’s a definite case to be made, by the way, that ‘no coarse language’ is un-Australian – it should be mandatory!
Sorry about the commenting problems FXH, I’ve turned preview off for the moment to see if that fixes things.
I’d like to know why the commentariat in the media do not find the Larry Franklin affair intriguing? If Franklin was stovepiping US secrets to Syria or Iran, there would have been a military strike by now.
still not working for me
if i post more than one sentence it seems
steve
countries that are friendly to each other frequently spy on each other. no biggie.
Oh? Then compare and contrast Jonathan Pollard.
Also, read up Constantine Fitzgibbon’s experience when the USA asked him to ferret out British secrets during the war. It shows a real difference of honour between the two countries.
Over a year ago I enrolled in an arts degree (majoring in political “science” and sociology) sweating great wads of enthusiasm. At long last I was entering the real world my teachers had so often spoken about, leaving behind the fake world of highschool education. Tertiary studies, something meaningful, challanging, interesting, engaging, and (according to my teachers) damned important.
A year in and I’m cynical about assesment, my fellow students, and certainly the importance of university education at all. I’ve become another “P’s get degrees” arts student, and the world around me seems as fake and meaningless as highschool ever did.
Kieran —
It is only teachers and academics who think there is such a thing as “the real world”. The people outside education know that there are many worlds, none of them real, all of them constructed by our perceptions and misperceptions, by our mistaken beliefs, our uneducated guesses, our near-misses and lucky escapes, by the spin of others (marketers, politicians, TV soap writers, theologians, street-corner gossips, to name a few).
Perhaps the nicest thing about Sociology (at least, it used to be nice when I did Sociology I at ANU) was that it showed you just how much of what you thought was your own autonomy was really somebody else’s spin. Even the suicide rate, for goodness sake, differed between Catholic and Protestant countries! Surely the travails of life were the same in each. So why wouldn’t the suicide rate be the same? Because of the hold of different religious world views on people, and the impact of them, hundreds of years later, on personal reactions to individual events.
Knowing that all is fake, that all is spin, that nothing matters, can set you free! Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Go well.
Umm why are you and Steve ‘Black helicopter’ Edwards so keen on the US to start a war on Israel, PM Fitzgerald? Steve made a non-sequitur and I responded accordingly. Given that US relations with Syria or Iran are hardly warm, then if either of those two countries were found to be spyng on the US, the response would probably be more hostile because the presumption would be that the spying was for a possibe aggressive purpose. If Israel is caught spying on the US, its intentions probably don’t involve, say, smuggling a dirty bomb into the US, this the response is different. Hostilities don’t begin and end with spying as spying is for different purposes. It’s that simple. I see that Steve has gone from ‘bomb the towelheads’ to ‘bomb the Joos’ now. Perhaps not an unnatural progression after all.
Jason,
As a non-Israeli Jew, I feel that I have a very direct, very personal interest in Israel complying with international law.
For starters, when non-Israeli Jews, like the AIPAC officials to whom Frnaklin supplied data, put their commitment to Israel above their loyalty to the coutnries of which they’re citizens, they call into question the patriotism and loyalty of ALL non-Israeli Jews and provide support for anti-semites.
Jews fought for centuries to be accepted as full citizens of countries like Australia. Now Israel and its supporters are threatening to undermine that.
The great majority of Jews – roughly 75-80% – live outside Israel. I for one and sick and tired of the extreme Israeli right (a minority of a minority) and their American supporters presuming to decide what’s in the interests of the rest of us.
Jason, if you have any honour, you should retract these atrocious smears:
“Umm why are you and Steve ‘Black helicopter’ Edwards so keen on the US to start a war on Israel, PM Fitzgerald?”
“It’s that simple. I see that Steve has gone from ‘bomb the towelheads’ to ‘bomb the Joos’ now. Perhaps not an unnatural progression after all.”
I have not called for anyone to declare war on Israel, or bomb the Jews.
And as a strong opponent of any potential conflict with Syria and Iran (and a lapsed supporter of the failure in Iraq) I do not support bombing towelheads either.
Elsewhere, Jason writes:
“steve
countries that are friendly to each other frequently spy on each other. no biggie.”
Ha ha ha ha! That’s why the FBI isn’t prosecuting Franklin! Well, that’s settled. I guess there’s no problem with Australia’s secrets being passed on to Malaysia. After all, we are allies under the 1971 Five Powers treaty.
Ian Gould, you have nailed it – Israel’s amen corner (the extreme Likudites and their American barrackers) is out of control. They pursue policies that are nakedly anti-American and completely biased towards Israel, and they label anyone an “anti-semite” who dares to expose their activities. It’s obvious that they are batting for another team, yet you are apparently a Jew-hater for saying so.
What’s even more galling, is that they will call you an Islamo-fascist appeaser if you oppose their plans for perpetual war with every strategic opponent of Israel. Their minions (like Pollard and Franklin) spy or steal American secrets, and they have the hide to claim that “it really doesn’t matter because Israel is an ally anyway”.
This behaviour is unsustainable. It is dividing America from her oldest friends, and smearing the good name of Jews in every country they call home.
Jason,
So if, say, a Pakistani-American scientist were passing nuclear weapons or missile technology to Paksitan you’d be okay with that?
Pakistan, after all, is an American ally.
Memo to Katz: this material is now touching on the points from Macaulay that needed tact before I brought them out. Before I do the full thing, in Civil Disabilities of the Jews he pooh-poohed the idea that giving Jews the vote could lead to a Zionist lobby of this corrupting sort. Yet that is precisely what happened. The proper remedy was to recognise the peril as realistic and make provision against it that was not itself repressive. Whereas Macaulay just went all “it will never happen”, and left the wound open for infection.
Kieren – a few random tips. The most important thing you can learn is self discipline – to do the work and be systematic. If you can wade through the bits that give you no gratification, the light bulb will eventually go off as you integrate the material and it becomes a tool for you to serve your own journeys.
Most academic teachers are decent people slogging along, trying to reconcile the many pressures on them. They don’t believe they are responsible for motivating you, or teaching you self discipline. They think you learn from problems and hurdles they put in your way.
Some teachers are natural communicators, who do empathise with their student’s journey, Take advantage of their skills, but don’t presume they are the only ones providing a good learning experience. (In the course I teach, for instance, we do a kind of hard/soft routine which we hope both challenges and inspires.)
Many of your fellow students are just providing noise, as they work out stuff about their own lives which is much more important to them than learning. Seek out and emulate the focused students.
Look for friends. Not just the people you can hang around with, but people you respect.
If you possibly can, find a course and a teacher who is known to be world standard. They will show you the point of enquiry. (You can learn an awful lot, actually, by carefully reading this blog, and Crooked Timber, and working out why the writers think that what they are doing is important).
To understand a particular field of knowledge, it really helps to work out what questions they are answering, and what curiosity is stimulated. Often you will find this in the history of the discipline.
Maybe you should be doing something else. What challenges you that you can make money from?
University gets better the further you go.
Steve
I retract the accusation about you wanting to ‘bomb towelheads’. wrong choice of words. I was referring to the anti-Muslim hysteria you display on your site but that is a purely domestic issue – perhaps ‘ban the towelheads’ would have been a better characterisation.
Ian
In reply to your hypothetical, of course espionage is not alright.Steve was trying to infer from the lack of aggressive military action against Israel because of its espionage the idea that somehow this issue is being treated less seriously. My point was that the warranted response (e.g. espionage) is a function of preexisting relations and how the country being spied on therefore thought the espionage was being put to use.
“Steve was trying to infer from the lack of aggressive military action against Israel because of its espionage the idea that somehow this issue is being treated less seriously.”
By the by, I haven’t suggested here that military strikes are the appropriate way to deal with espionage – simply that if espionage had been perpetrated by Syria or Iran, it is not inconcievable they would have been hit by now.
Ian Gould,
I’ve tried to figure out why that minority has been so successful in having their views be the decisive ones both in the US and Israel but I just can’t understand it. I think I’d need to speak hebrew and live as a Jew for ten years before it would make sense. Could you shed any light on this? I can understand the position within Israel with the constant threat of annihilation, but the strength of the strongly Zionist lobby in countries outside of Israel is difficult to understand. There seems to be a contrast between what most non-Israeli jews, like yourself (correct me if i’m wrong here, i don’t want to put words in your mouth), want and what the official organisations such as AIPAC are lobbying for. Richard Ben Cramer in his book “How Israel Lost” says that its only a matter of time before the likes of AIPAC catch up, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening in reality.
SWIO – it is very simple. The Likudites use the spectre of terrorist attacks to push the argument that America and Israel share precisely the same interests. Failing that, they will invoke the image of anti-semitism should anyone fall out of line. Thus AIPAC and friends shame Americans into adopting their policies.
There is no doubt that there are those who would like to annihilate Israel, but that doesn’t mean they are under any “threat” as such. At worst, Israel faces the considerable damage of periodic suicide attacks (which can kill dozens of people in one strike), which is no small deal – but their country will not get anything close to being wiped off the map.
From a policy point of view there is a good case for Western countries to be the security guarantors of Israel, at least as a last resort against conventional aggression (which is unlikely anyway). However, that doesn’t mean, as you imply, we should sign up to the entire Likudite platform.
We should call for their total withdrawal from the West Bank, and for the end of military incursions into Palestinian territory. If this does not happen, then a decade or two Israel will resemble the old South Africa – with a minority taking the productive land and walling off the swelling majority, who themselves must suffer endless humiliations and obstacles to their economic development.
I don’t know how to convince them to get out – anyone have any ideas?
Steve,
I see no reason why any country needs to guarantee Israel anything militarily.
Anyone who succeeds in invading Israel will have to deal with their vast nuclear arsenal.
We saw in NZ what happens when a country with friendly ties with Israelhas the temerity to arrest and put on trial Israeli agents.
They are criticized.
rule number one in the blogosphere Israel is not allowed to be criticised otherwise you will be called anti-semitic!
Well, you’re probably right on all that, Homer.
SWIO,
I don’t speak Herbew either – so maybe I can’t shed any light on the subject.
One problem is the Israeli political system. Too much power resides with the minor religious and ethnic parties which are willing to do deals with Likud to get, for example, more money for Sephardic Rabbinical schools or more housing subsidies for Russian immigrants.
Part of the problem is the millenial movement in the US which believes that the existence of Israle is a necessary precursor to the arrival of the Messiah. (There’s actually a small but vocal Jewish minority which argues the exact reverse – the secular state of Israel is blasphemous because God promised that the Messiah would restore Israel. By that reasoning attempting to restore Israel before the Messiah arrives is Man attempting to pre-empt the will of God.)
There’s also the problem that the majority of Israelis, while they sincerely want peace want it on terms that are violently objectionable to the majority of Palestianians. The Palestinians thought that the Oslo processs was going to lead to a state on the the whole of the west bank and Gaza and in East Jerusalem. The second intifada arose from their anger at what they saw as the Israeli rejection of that deal. The Israelis want to hang on to East Jerusalem and a chunk of the west bank. Considering that Israel already occupies something like 90% of the territory of the inter-war Mandate of Palestine, I have to confess I hacve a good deal of sympathy for the Palestinian position.
Kieran Bennet – I’m being a bit presumptuous here, but I presume you are the first generation of your family to go through university, and you are from a rural school. You are thus at a disadvantage compared to many of your fellow students, especially in Canberra and especially studying political science and sociology.
In Canberra, many students taking those courses will probably have some sort of family exposure to the political process, which could initially be disorienting to you. I would suspect that the sociology students may also generally have some sort of pre-existing familiarisation that you won’t.
Many of your fellow students may also be more accustomed to seeking advice from lecturers.
All those things said, the staff and courses at ANU look really interesting. The challenge for you is to hang on through your second year and find some areas of passion, or even just strong professional interest, and study them strongly.
You may or may not know that first and second years are factory environments, with real scholarship starting to get underway in third and later years. Students from families with university connections understand this and drive through. You can too. It can also be helpful to read extra material and to approach lecturers for advice on this.
The analysis on your blog suggests you are easily capable of doing well in your course. Find your passion and thrive.
About the Australian lexicon and how swearing should be mandatory. It has only ever been a mandatory lexicon among collingwood supporters and those who frequent the epping line. And of course all who live north of sepperation street.
If ever you are not sure you can always tell if you have caught an epping line or a hurstbridge line train by listening to the natives and counting the number of expletives between stops.
Benno, I spent the first twenty years of my life in Reservoir, and therefore frequented both of the lines you mentioned and lived north of Separation Street. The only time I can recall hearing an expletive was when alighting from a train on the night of Grand Final day 1980, when a Collingwood supporter on the train called me a “F___ing weird c___” as the train left the platform. I don’t know how he worked out that I was a Richmond supporter at the time.
(For the benefit of northern states and international visitors, Richmond donkey-licked Collingwood in the 1980 Grand Final.)
Within hours of my arriving in Australia I heard my first Collingwood joke: “Who are Colling wood playing in the final this year?”, “The premiers!”.
Benno – I dare you to test the theory. Come south of the river, find a BMW with an inhabitant – preferably female, preferably blonde, preferably butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
Then clout her car with your ancient Holden.
I think it might redefine the very notin of swearing.
all I can say Tiley is that I consider collingwood supporters to be human.
Methinks this has happen to you.
What is the difference between a 4WD and an echidna? I say bring back class warfare. We can have the real battlers vs the aspirational voters vs the second class citizens vs the middle class elitists vs anyone who has ever been or sent their kids to a private school. Anyone who thinks australia is a classless society need only speak to my psychiatrist.
Of course there are many other subsets, I think I should compile a list and post it later, in order to stir up efnick tension.
Mark Latham rulez 04.
classes in australian society:
Bogans
Wogs
Real battlers
middle class elite
anyone who has been to a private school or sends their kids to one (not counting battling caflics and contains subset of aspirational voters)
Battling caflics
Bible bashing bastards
Try-hard bohemians
Steiners
As for warfare, the sides would line up thus: Bogans, real battlers, middle class elite, battling caflics and try-hard bohemians on one side facing off against the Private school types and the bible bashing bastards. Wogs wouldn’t really join anyside and the steiners would be equally confused.
Now so as none of this is construed as racist, if any terms you are unsure of I will exlpain in detail. Please feel free to add to this roleplay.
What about the blackfellas?
Say Benno, did you purposely draw your militant coalitions on swearing lines? ‘Those who see swearing as a natural part of Australian discourse’ vs. ‘those who know not what it truly means to be Australian’.
blackfellas as you call them do not neatly fit into one of those there groups, or form a generalised group of their own. People who are Italian or greek may or not be in the wogs group whereas some other people may. No, these groups have nothing to do with swearing. As you can see bogans and private school types are lined up against each other despite Tiley’s post.
Can’t have a proper war without racial prejudice, mate.
There is prejudice as you can see. Just not racial, it is organised on different lines, before you know if someone is enemy or foe you must subtly engage them in intelligent conversation (doesn’t need to seem intelligent from anyones perspective but your own). Rather than just looking at their skin pigment or measuring the dimensions of their nose.
There are more idelogical ways to discriminate and hate.
Mark Latham rulez 04.